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In an earlier post I suggested that looking at it honestly you should probably expand your definition of who your teachers are. Here I would like to suggest the opposite- reigning it in. I think it is important to give credit to those training partners and students who have helped you develop and grow. At the same time, it is also important not to try to make teachers out of people you just don’t know that well. If you have been training for a while you will probably have spent some time in other peoples’ dojo, and taken a seminar or two from visiting teachers. Some of these people might even be famous, in karate circles anyway.

In Midori Kenji’s dojo in Koniya, August 1991. After training we had a nice dinner at his house. Unfortunately I spilled soup on him, Fortunately he has a sense of humor.

Take me as an example: looking just at my karate, over the years I have spent a week training one on one in a small dojo in Amami Oshima with Toguchi Seikichi. I have had dinner with Mas Oyama and trained Kyokushin with Midori Kenji. I did a seminar on Sepai with Shinjo Anyu and have visited and briefly trained in a variety of Goju dojo on Okinawa as well as around the US and Canada. I had private lessons in Okinawa Kempo from Irei Isao, and I’ve trained some in Uechi Ryu. The list could go on, but why? These have all (or mostly all) been fun things do to. I may have gleaned a little insight here or there from them. But these people are not my teachers. I was friends with Midori Kenji and we trained some but I have no mastery of the Kyokushin of that time or his Shinkyokushin now. I was never a member of the Shoreikan, never a part of the Jundokan, and am not a Uechi or Okinawa Kempo yudansha. A few hours in a seminar hall, a visit to a dojo, a weekend training intensely or a friendship that includes some training cannot, does not, make someone your teacher. I have no right to claim any real connection to, or knowledge of, these people or their arts, and I do not.

While I visited many times I can’t really claim Matayoshi sensei was my teacher. But who recognizes the fellow on the left, 26 years ago…

But look around the net and you often see long lists of teachers under people’s names. Everyone they ever visited, it seems! They certainly did not have time to actually train with all these people. It is kind of a shame, really. In some ways it belittles the teacher-student relationship. It takes a long time to get to know someone. To be your teacher someone needs to know you, your personality, your strengths and weaknesses. If they do not, how can they shape their instruction, help guide you in your training? If you think that a few insights make a teacher, or that you can teach well in a standardized manner, you might think that a brief visit is enough. But it isn’t. You can learn a kind of shallow martial art that way, but you will be missing out on the real content. You will be missing the part where your teacher challenges you to face the deepest rooted problems in your art, the little but important pieces he or she only knows you are ready for but missing because they know you and how you train. The places where they push you in ways you didn’t know you needed to go. You might think you are getting something great from a short meeting, but unfortunately that may really just show how shallow your experience, or your relationship with your teacher, is. You are still missing the real content because that requires more understanding of where you are than any teacher can get in a short time.

It is not much, but a birthday cake is always appreciated.

And by thinking the teacher-student relationship can be so transitory you will also be missing the other real content, the development of a lasting relationship that is based as much in what you are doing for your teacher as what they are doing for you. Give and take, not one way, not just taking and learning but giving something in return. It is important. And if you can’t imagine doing anything for your teacher? I would really suggest taking a closer look. If they are your teacher they have been working hard for you and you really should do the same for them. If you have not, if that idea seems foreign instead of normal, you either need to take a closer look at yourself, or you might not really have a teacher at all. So to finish I’ll ask you: who are your teachers, and what have you done for them lately?

Kodokan Boston will be hosting Sifu Liu Chang’I for our annual Feeding Crane Gong’fu seminar the weekend of October 1 & 2. The seminar is open to anyone who is interested in learning more about the Feeding Crane system.

The sign up information is below. Please contact us if you have any questions or need any more information.

These seminars are always a great time! Liu sifu is an interesting and engaging teacher, the system itself is fascinating, and it is always great fun to sweat and touch hands with the people who come train with us. The group always has a real mix of backgrounds, which gives lots of opportunity to learn something from everyone who attends. On top of that, while who comes changes some from year to year we always seem to have a really good group of people- fun, dedicated, and interested in both learning and sharing. It makes for a great weekend of training!

I had the pleasure of spending this past weekend with two friends, Mario McKenna sensei and Russ Smith sensei. We did some walking in the mountains near Vancouver, had some very nice meals, had a couple of classes with Mario’s students (an excellent group), and not surprisingly spent a lot of time in the dojo, the park, and the living room trading technique and perspective, playing, and generally sharing our varied experiences in the Okinawan and Chinese martial arts. It was an excellent weekend!

This started out as sightseeing on the river, but who can pass up an opportunity like open space and a free moment?

I always enjoy feeling like the junior in the room and with these two gentlemen it is an easy role to fall into. They each have a different background, but for both of them it is one both deep and broad. This is unusual, to say the least, and it makes for great conversation (physical or verbal). When tools you are not familiar with are being brought to the table there is always something to learn. I feel like I have a lot to think about in my arts and my practice from what we did. With some kind assistance with personal research and some more exposure to things I know little about, as well as the periodic laughter that comes from touching hands and finding the other person’s answers to the problems you present both effective and surprising, the weekend was full of great take-aways.

Best way to share- touch hands.

It was also really fun. I have a great deal of respect for the training and experience of both these men. There are few people I have met, here or in Asia, of their caliber. But skills aside they are both good people, and we simply had a good time. People can take themselves very seriously, and in my opinion that gets in the way of learning, and of teaching. These gentlemen take their practice very seriously indeed. But not themselves. We had no exchanging of titles in or outside of the dojo. No constant bowing, no pressure on the students to make sure they were properly deferential, and while we were sharing there was no talking down to or instruction in the right way to… going on. More importantly, there was no sense of competition- no one was trying to prove they had more answers or a better perspective. Instead each of us seemed to be struggling to understand each other’s starting points and see where what we might offer could help create a different solution and then to see where our own starting points might benefit from a different perspective. To me, that ability to lose, to let your solutions be wrong sometimes and to try to see what the other person is offering as a different option, is the best way to actually learn.

It is easy as a martial arts instructor to fall into the trap of needing to be right, or be the best, or to keep control. Not having any of those things come up was, to me, a good indication of the character of these guys, and of their dedication to learning over already knowing. I have also met both their students, and that closes the circle- it is clear that in both groups respect for each other is a core value, one that supersedes winning or even physical skill. Which is not to say skill is not important- these guys both have excellent skills, as do their students. In my opinion that respect is what allows those skills to develop. I read occasional bits about how the Okinawan martial arts are dying, that commercialism and lack of understanding are undermining the core of them. Well, my experience is that while there are plenty of McDojo, and plenty of unskilled or unscrupulous instructors out there there are also plenty of small dojo run by dedicated and honest people who are maintaining our traditions in the best possible way. With people like these passing on our arts I have no fear of them dying, they are in excellent hands.

With Mario sensei’s students. What a great group!

Anyway, I won’t go into details of what we did and what we exchanged. Some of that is private, some is boring, and some is impossible to convey without contact. But spending the weekend laughing and sharing with a couple of friends was great. My heartfelt thanks to both of them for a fun weekend. Looking forward to seeing you both soon!

A few months ago I was asked by Mr. Michael Clayton to work with him on a short paper about the definition of the term (not the style, but the words themselves) Matayoshi Kobudo. It seemed like an interesting exercise and I said yes. I am glad I did. I have enjoyed the process a great deal, and it indeed turned into a very interesting way to look at the term. If semantics, with a little history thrown in, is not your thing it might have limited interest but it has made me think about how we use words to describe our training, and the groups we belong to, and in that alone it was fun to do. It was also a pleasure working with Michael and I would like to thank him both for thinking of me, and for his hard work on it, as well as for the illustrations which I think came out great! The paper we developed is below, and I hope you enjoy it.

I don’t really post about technique or form here, as I don’t think the written word is a very good format for that. However, I was speaking with a friend a few weeks ago about our kobudo and he mentioned the circles in our art, speaking in particular about the nunchiyaku. I paused for a second and then kept going. The term “circle” is a pretty common shorthand for a variety of shapes in most martial arts, but the comment stuck with me. That was because there are not actually any circles in our art, at least as far as I can see.

Of course there are curves- pretty much all our blocks and strikes travel in a curve of some sort- but the best way to describe those curves is probably a parabola, or an ellipse. Perhaps a J? Not a circle. Never a circle. The strike or block should have an apex. With some weapons- the bo for example- if the hands do not leave the body-box, as they not supposed to, the tip’s parabola is pretty obvious. With others, like the nunchiyaku, it can be harder to see and, more importantly, to do. This is mostly because it is tempting to move the tip of the nunchiyaku in a circle. This is easier to control, since it keeps the force in the end of the weapon constant and easily predictable, but it is incorrect. There should not be constant force in the weapon, but a tug at the end of the swing where the tip is hitting the apex of the curve and is going the fastest. This gets even harder to see, and do, with longer more flexible weapons like the sansetsukon or suruchin but again the strikes are not circles but parabola. (This is one difference between the suruchin and, say, poi- the movements are designed for striking a target, not just spinning.)

Look at it this way:

A circle travels like this:

On this path of motion the tip of the weapon stays a constant distance from the center and with a constant input the force in the direction of the velocity is constant at any point along its path.

A parabola travels like this:

The tip of the weapon is furthest from the start at the tip of the curve (the vertex), and if constant energy is applied the force changes along the path of travel, with the tip moving the fastest at the vertex.

Obviously this is hard to explain without a moving weapon, a way to relate it to the user’s body box, a target, and some attention to methods of energy development, (and more advanced, as well as more technically accurate, geometry). But even though it is difficult to describe in words it is an important distinction. The parabola is faster, develops more power (and allows for use of things like compression and expansion of the torso in power development that circles do not), and is harder to both see and predict. On the defensive side it absorbs energy a little differently and stays closer to the body-box, the only area one needs to defend.

“There is no beginning to practice or end to enlightenment; there is no end to enlightenment or end to practice.”

In the dojo at the end of each training we sit briefly in mokuso, meditation. Some members of our community also practice meditation on their own. It is a demanding and rewarding practice, and one that is much more accessible with proper instruction.

We are lucky to have in our dojo a connection to the Dogen (Soto) Zen lineage. Mori Tzelnic has been practicing for over 20 years and is ordained as a lay monk, Chiso Anagarika, in this community. Here is a brief description of their practice:

“This lineage is base don practice and instructions to practice, as opposed to study of the stutras or writings about Zen. Texts are used but the main practice is sitting. It is about doing rather than learning about doing. It is straightforward and very simple. For example, we talk about sitting rather than meditation because meditation engages people in a lot of additional contextual ideas. As its core it is about experiencing each and every moment, not avoiding or getting away from reality.”

They do not usually teach outside of their community. However, Chiso Anagarika has asked for, and, after a vetting process, has received an exemption to teach a class on proper meditation technique for us. We greatly appreciate this exemption and the opportunity it affords our dojo!

This class will last approximately one hour and will cover meditation, kinhin (walking meditation), and have some time for Q&A. No special equipment or clothing is needed. There will be a small donation, $10 or whatever participants chose to donate over that. The class is open to all members of the Kodokan Boston community, training or not, including family and friends.

This class will be help Sunday, June 12th, at 10 AM. It will be at our dojo.

To sign up please contact me and I will put you on the list. Class size will be limited and once the class is full the list will be closed.

If you have any questions also please feel free to contact me.

We are looking forward to what promises to be a very rewarding and interesting opportunity!

We who practice the Okinawan martial arts in the West today owe a debt to those who pioneered this practice here. Primarily American servicemen during the occupation of Okinawa after WWII, these men brought what was then a small scale set of local martial practices to a much larger public. Either as their direct students or in a more general way as beneficiaries of the work they did to spread these arts, without their hard work few if any of us would have had the chance to do what we do.

Among these men is Kimo Wall sensei. In general he has maintained a fairly low profile over the years. He has had no stories about him in Black Belt, has published no books or videos, and barely has a web presence. He has led a somewhat nomadic life, moving around to stay in contact with his students and share his art. He has never been much for advertising and he does little to promote membership in his Kodokan (and does not even charge membership dues). He feels that the training should speak for itself and if people want to train they can come train, without the need for advertising. Recently Kimo sensei has engaged more with social media and I have noticed that this has not been accompanied by much accurate information about him. That is too bad, as he is one of the most well-rounded, generous, and hard-working pioneers of the Okinawan martial arts in the US. To remedy that somewhat, I would like to share a little about him.

Knife defense at a demo at UMass Amherst in the early 1980s

I will leave personal information to him but his training background is indeed unique. The child of a US serviceman he grew up primarily in Hawaii. He got an almost stereotypical start in the arts- he had asthma and a friend of the family suggest karate training as a way to help him get over it. In a less stereotypical way his training began in Kamuela, Hawaii, in 1949. His teachers were Sam and Walter Higa. The father, Sam, had immigrated to Hawaii with his family around 1939. Before that he had studied Goju Ryu under Miyagi Chojun and Higa Seiko. Kimo sensei studied with these teachers until he moved to Georgia and entered the Marine Corps in 1961. He has also mentioned that after 1959 he met and occasionally trained with Mitsugi Kobayashi, also a student of Higa Seiko’s.

Kimo sensei was first stationed to Okinawa in 1962. He was certainly not the first US Serviceman to enter an Okinawan dojo. However, he was the first to enter HIga Seiko’s dojo and was very likely the first to arrive on Okinawa with both a letter of introduction from a former student and over a decade of experience in the art. So, instead of starting his study of Goju Ryu he started a process of refinement and expansion of what he already knew. His training began under a teacher that had learned before Goju was fully formed (He relates that Sam Higa taught Naihanchi as part of his Goju Ryu, since it had been something Miyagi taught in the 20s and 30s.), giving him a valuable window on the development of the art as he continued learning from his first teacher’s teacher. He was accepted to Higa sensei’s dojo and continued to train there through his various postings on Okinawa, and on his frequent trips to the island after he left the service. Higa Seiko passed away in 1966 and after that he trained with the other seniors- Takamine, Higa Seikichi, Kiyuna, Gibo, and others.

Takamine Chokubo, Higa Seikichi, Kimo Wall

At that time, the Okinawan karate community was not as factionalized as it is now. Kimo sensei tells stories of visiting many dojo, including those of Yagi sensei, Miyazato sensei, Masanobu Shinjo sensei, as well as non-Goju dojo, to train together, to do testing which at that time was often held at the Jundokan, to do demonstrations, and to socialize. He was introduced to the Shoreikan dojo in Koza in the 60s, when Toguchi sensei was primarily living in Tokyo. Kimo sensei first met his students Tamano and Shinoda, and got interested in the training subjects and two person application sets they demonstrated. He learned those subjects from Toguchi sensei’s students and first met Toguchi sensei in 1969. Higa sensei also introduced him to another student of Miyagi’s, Kina Seiko. He trained with Kina sensei both in the 60s and on his visits to the island later on, and found the insights into Goju he got from Kina very valuable and the friendship that developed a wonderful part of his life in Okinawa.

Renshi certificate from Kina Seiko, 1980

All told this forms a remarkable and unique experience of Goju Ryu, one quite different from most other members of his generation. Able to start his training on the island with a good deal of experience and a formal introduction from a respected source, as well as some understanding of the language and culture from his home dojo and childhood village, he became a part of the dojo in ways that few if any other foreigners at the time were able to. His training reflected this: soon after arriving he was accepted into the seniors class time, which was private and took place after the kids and lower level black belts finished their training in the evenings. Along with his exposure to other teachers and aspects of Goju Ryu, it formed a depth and breadth of knowledge few can espouse.

With Masanobu Shinjo sensei

But his Goju training was only one aspect of his experience in Okinawa. While for most servicemen of his day karate was the main aspect of study, Kimo sensei also embarked on an intense study of Okinawan Kobudo. It started on his first day visiting Higa sensei’s dojo. He had just arrived on Okinawa and came to the dojo with his introduction letter. He was met by Matayoshi Shinpo, who was living at the dojo in those days. That turned out to be a very fortunate meeting, as Matayoshi sensei would become his kobudo teacher and in many ways his mentor in the Okinawan martial arts.

Kimo sensei relates that in those days Matayoshi sensei was still re-connecting to many friends and former students of his father. He had not been back in Okinawa long, and did not have a car. Kimo sensei did, and with his days often free he would train with Higa and Matayoshi sensei and at times drive Matayoshi sensei around to find and visit find friends and students of his father. Even on Okinawa in those days kobudo was not very popular. Matayoshi sensei was just starting to think about what would become his life’s work of developing kobudo on the island. The formal syllabus of the Zen Okinawa Kobudo Renmei, the development of things like the formal hojo undo (basic sets), and the founding of Matayoshi’s Kodokan dojo were all more than a decade away. The kata syllabus was slightly different (Kimo sensei relates sometimes doing 10 or 11 bo kata, for example), and the sequence of some other kata were still in flux. Matayoshi would sometimes focus on one weapon for weeks or a month at a time, and there were all sorts of applications he taught that were not contained in the kata. The tie between kata and application was very strong, and the applications were geared towards not allowing the opponent the opportunity to block or defend in any way, as opposed to blocking and attacking sequences. With his schedule his training was often one-on-one during the day, and it gave him a unusual window into the Matayoshi lineage kobudo at a period when it was developing and changing.

With Matayoshi, Oshiro Zenei, Kina

By the early 1970s he was already well versed in Matayoshi’s kobudo, something that few other foreigners had much experience with and something that was fairly rare on Okinawa as well. In addition to his training he developed a close bond with Matayoshi sensei. When he left the Marine Corps in the early 70s and founded his own dojo, he asked and was authorized by Matayoshi sensei to use the name Kodokan for his new organization. (For many years the characters he used to write the name were identical to the Kodokan of Matayoshi Shinpo. In later years he changed the first character, Ko, from Light (光) to Old (古), to represent his desire to preserve and pass on all the material he had been given from his various teachers.) On visits to the island Matayoshi sensei would help him find work and lodging, and he visited Kimo sensei in the US a couple of times, including a long trip around the country together in 1995.

The experience Kimo sensei had studying with Matayoshi sensei, and with Higa sensei, was in many ways a slice of Okinawan martial arts training that has mostly disappeared- often one on one training with a basis in kata and application, geared towards the individual student and their progression. Indeed, Kimo sensei has related that the changes that have taken place in both the karate and kobudo on Okinawa are sometimes subtle but as a whole have created a very different feeling in much of the practice: more formal, less organic, and sometimes more focused on form than application. Training in the 60s was also based in a strong and ongoing relationship between teacher and student, one not founded on an economic transaction like paying for instruction but in years of training together and getting to really know each other. Something that is hard to develop in short visits to the island, or with someone you have just met.

Smile!

His relationships in the karate community on Okinawa also spread outside the dojo. He became friends with Mr. Nakasone, the owner of the well known Shureido karate and kobudo equipment store, when the business was just getting started. He relates how he encouraged Nakasone san to move away from a mix of sporting goods and focus on martial arts equipment, was there when Matayoshi and Nakasone met to discuss the size and shape of some of the weapons that would be part of the Shureido brand, and that he wrote the first English language ad for the business. (He was also given the original license to sell Shureido equipment in the US, something he passed on to Mr. Takushi a number of years later.) The two men are still friends, and I remember Nakasone san taking a good deal of time when we first met in 1990 to help me find a dojo near where I was living in Kagoshima, and to treat me to lunch, as a favor to a student of an old friend. These relationships have formed the backbone of Kimo sensei’s connection to the Okinawan martial arts, and are a unique window into the development of the Okinawan martial arts as they are today.

With Nakasone san in the 1980s

When he opened his first Kodokan dojo in Puerto Rico after leaving the service in 1971 Kimo sensei also began developing his own syllabus from what he had been taught. He created his own versions of the two man bunkai Toguchi developed for a few of the Shoreikan training kata, application sets that conformed more closely to the principles his teachers had instilled in him. He also began teaching kobudo. At that time kobudo instruction was fairly rare in the West, and skilled kobudo instructors even rarer. Of course by this time he was not the only Westerner to have trained in Matayoshi kobudo but he is certainly the only one who had learned the entire syllabus taught in his day, from bo to suruchin, 9’ bo, utsu or kudamon bo, and so on. Indeed, there are a limited number of people, Okinawan or Western, who can claim that today, never mind in 1970! To this day his kobudo reflects what he was taught in the 60s and 70s, before the development of the Zen Okinawa Kobudo Renmei and the formalization of some aspects of the system.

This flag, long a centerpiece of the Kodokan Dojo in Sobe, Naha, was made in Guatemala and was a gift from Kimo sensei.

From the founding of his first dojo Kimo sensei embarked on what has been a long road of teaching and spreading his karate and kobudo. As I have gotten to know people around the country who practice our arts, I am constantly surprised by how often his name comes up. He was the first exposure many people had to Kobudo, starting in the 70s. (And he may be the person responsible for the story of the sai originally being a tool for planting seeds- he says he made the story up in response to someone’s continuous questions at a seminar in the early 70s, and thought everyone there knew it was a joke!). He has influenced the training of generations of karate and kobudo ka in the US, and has run dojo in Puerto Rico, Guatemala, California, Tennessee, and at UMass Amherst, (where I first started training with him in 1986) among other places. While he has maintained a low profile, he has had a significant impact on the Okinawan martial arts community in the west. It is not something he talks about, but without him the history of Goju Ryu, and of Okinawan Kobudo, in the US would certainly have been different.

With Matayoshi sensei, Giles and Martha Hopkins, and members of Kodokan Boston, Amherst MA, 1995

Over the years, Kimo sensei has maintained his ties to his teachers in Okinawa, visiting for extended periods and later bringing students with him. In 1986, 30 years ago, he was graded 7th dan by both the Shodokan and Matayoshi Shinpo sensei. At that time (and possibly still) the highest ranked foreign student ranked directly by Matayoshi, or the Shodokan. As his direct teachers have passed away, he has seen little need to press for added rank. Indeed, he suggested to Higa sensei and Matayoshi sensei in 1965 that foreign students never be allowed to rise beyond 5th dan in rank, though they should be taught the full depth of their systems. He still feels strongly that the Okinawan arts are a cultural artifact of the Okinawan people, and as such should be guided, guarded, and controlled by them. Time has seen other ideas prevail in so far as rank goes but he has always tried to teach his students the same respect for their teachers, and for the Okinawan culture, he has, and has maintained the ideal of practice and teaching over rank or acclaim. While this has not garnered him much in the way of wealth or fame it has enabled him to have a profound effect on the lives of many of his students, and to have profoundly affected the course of the practice of the Okinawan martial arts in the US.

Of course there is lots more that can be said about Kimo sensei. Perhaps another time. But while he does not go in for much self-promotion I do hope Kimo sensei will take some credit for the work he has done to promote the arts, and to teach his students. He deserves it, but I am not sure if he really wants it or not. Really, I think he just wants to keep training and teaching. As he said to me years ago: “I don’t want to be put up on a pedestal. There is no room to move up there, and I want to keep moving, and learning!”